(Daniel) After a pleasant but fairly sleepless ten hour bus ride from Bangkok, Nii and I found ourselves at the port in Krabi, southern Thailand.  In under a week, I will fly from Bangkok’s new Suvarnbhumi Airport to LAX Los Angeles,  leaving Nii behind me to meet up with my two brothers, Nick and Oli, and Nicks fiancé Amy.   Before then however, it is time for Nii and I to return to the start of things for us, to Phi Phi Island, the place I once thought of as home.

When time comes to leave, Nii has told me that she will return with me to Bangkok, where she will get a new job in her field of Engineering.  Her time with the trip should help her to step up the pay ladder as well as make finding a job that much easier.   On my return to England I will arrange for a visa for Nii to come over there and visit me, time will tell what the outcome of her visit might be.

For now, we boarded the small ferryboat meant no doubt for river crossings rather than the rough seas around Phi Phi island. After finding a place to sit for the two hour ride, the boat filled up with people, more than there were seats, forcing some to stand outside on the roof.   The journey turned out to one of my rougher crossings to date, the boat listing at angles that looked from my seat  like 30/40 degrees.  The people standing outside got soaked through by waves, even on the roof.  They came in about halfway through the journey, soaked and sunburnt.

Our arrival on the Island did not go unnoticed.  Nii had only been on Phi Phi for a few weeks before I arrived and signed her up on the Expedition team.  However she had made many friends in the time that she had been there.  From my own time living and working on the Island which I first visited ten years ago,  I have many friends here too, despite having lost some to the Tsunami.  We checked into a guesthouse, then ate dinner with Nii’s ex employers at their office.

My own reason for returning to the Island is simple, I have well and truly caught the spearfishing bug, this is my chance to come back to the clear waters of Phi Phi and spend some real time hunting around the island.  I have sent my speargun to America in the Wolf,  but my friends who took us out before had a few spares, maybe they would lend me a gun to use?  It turned out that Mr Chan, the boat captain  who had gone out with Martin and I before, had left the island for 3 months.  I found this out from some other drivers at the pier.  However they managed to get hold of him on the phone, he agreed to lend me his gun. 

I was so pleased that I went out straight away, persuading Nii to rent a kayak with me.  By the time we had paddled out to the first spot the water had started to get a bit rough, so we decided not to bother with fishing, but had a quick snorkel in the area before heading back to the beach.

The next day we walked to the beach early, taking one of the boat drivers and a friend of his out with us.  Unfortunately Mr Chan’s  gun which had obviously not been used for some time, broke before I even got a chance to fire it once.  I had swam out to look for fish, and had got quite a scare by a school of barracuda ranging between one and one and a half meters, I did not dare to fire on the dangerous fish, only too aware of their deadly jaws, and bad temper.  After they had swam off, I spotted some snapper and went to fire, just then I felt a snap, and heard a loud twang, the elastic had broken.

I returned to the boat, the captains friend who also had a gun gave his one to me to use.  Thanking him, I jumped back in the water and swam out again, loading the smaller gun.  I noticed that the elastic was a bit too long,  so that even on the higher power setting, the gun was not as strong as I would like.  I swam out a good distance from the boat, missing a couple of fish on the way with the noticeably weak gun.  Just as I was about to return to the boat and give up, I saw something inside a cave at about 7 meters depth.  Holding my breath I swam down to look, inside the cave it very was dark stopping me from seeing what was in there.   I turned around to swim back to the surface, but as I looked out into the blue water a large shape approached.  It was a barracuda, about 130cms long, stopping right infront of me, it turned sideways so it could get a clear look.  I hesitated for a second, what if it wanted to bite me, it certainly looked aggressive.  I thought of Nii and the boys on the boat.  They had been out here for several hours without catching a thing.  I fired. 

As I pulled the trigger, for a millisecond I closed my eyes, the reaction to a gun going off I guess, as I opened them I saw the spear strike the killer fish square in the side, its thick scales shining in the clear water flashed for a second as the spear hit it, but didn’t penetrate!  The fish looked stunned, then it gave a huge thrash of it’s tail, clouding up the water around the both of us. For a second I couldn’t see anything, then through a clear patch in the cloud I spotted the fish speeding away into the distance.  More than a bit scared, I returned to the boat with my tale of woe.  A storm started to come in then forcing us to return to the beach where we ordered  order a new elastic from Krabi.  I would have to wait till tomorrow for my fish.

The next day the parts had arrived, but after waiting for over an hour to fix the elastic we went out with the same captain and the elastic snapped again first time I loaded the gun.  This time, I decided to try with the single elastic.  Jumping in at a new spot, open to the sea rather than protected by reef or rocks.  Almost immediately I swam into a school of silver fish.  Swimming down into them I fired the spear.  Despite it’s only having one elastic, the spear found it’s mark, a good size silver fish thrashed around for a few seconds, then died.  Ecstatic, I returned to the boat and dropped off my quarry.   When I returned to the spot, the school had moved on.  Without the reassurance of a reef or sandy bottom, I felt exposed swimming in the deep water, but carried on diving down into the blue abyss.  A few snapper managed to avoid my shots, the spear was shooting to the side, but just as I was about to give up, a big jackfish swam close to me, without hesitating I fired again, the Jackfish swimming wildly around in circles as I pulled in the line careful not to let it escape.

Back on the boat, the beautiful fish was received with cheers, The boat captain continually made comments at how expert my diving was, and that no Thai people had been able to catch the deep water fish surrounding that particular area.  On land, we went to see a friend of mine, who Barbequed the fish for us.  Both tasted amazing, we ate the lot. Stuffed to the gills we were unable to go out again until the next day! 

The next day, we had arranged to visit Koh Bamboo, a small uninhabited island just off Phi Phi.  On the way we stopped at a reef halfway between the two islands.  As usual we stopped for a while as I tried to spear a good fish for dinner.  This reef was grouper territory, and never having speared one of the delicious fish, I was eager to get one.  In the morning, whilst we packed our stuff ready to leave on our return from Bamboo, I had carved a fertility offering, as is common of fishermen here in Thailand.  The offering is usually a large wooden penis, which is placed in a cave by the sea.  My intention had been to swim down, leaving the offering in an underwater cave for the sea goddess.  At first I had forgotten the wooden phallus, and missed at least five good fish.  Frustrated I returned to the boat, and asked for the carving.  With this in my pocket, I returned to the reef.  Just as I did so, I swam down about five meters and looked into a hole.   A large rock grouper, unaware of my observation swam past the hole as I fired into it.  Clouds of sand and silt flew up, I felt the familiar thrashing of the fish, but it managed to swim further into the cave.  Fortunately I had my gloves on, and was able to hold onto the rocks with one arm, as I reached into the darkness and freed the spear, pulling out a beautiful green and brown rock grouper.  I returned to the boat practically singing through my snorkel!

The boat captain dropped us on Bamboo as the weather started to churn the seas. The few tourists that had been on the island soon left, leaving just the two of us and the park rangers who stayed here.  We borrowed a tent from the rangers, who helped us to fry the fish which I had caught.

Sunset on the Island was amazing, with no other people, the beach was deserted, overnight the weather remained calm, and in the morning I awoke to see the sun rise for the my last day around Phi Phi.

As we waited for the boat to come and collect us, I found a monitor Lizard, the prehistoric looking creature was apparently unafraid of me as it went about it’s business searching for food, I took some photos of it, while Nii wandered on the beach.  Soon other tourists began to arrive, but still no sign of our driver.  I showed Nii how to race hermit crabs, by drawing a circle in the sand and seeing which one gets out first! 

The prearranged collection time came and went, then an hour passed.  Nii became angry, but I was worried, remembering the rough seas when he had left us yesterday.  After two hours on the beach, a boat driver arrived who we recognized as our captains friend.  The seas had been so rough yesterday, that the captain was nearly killed, he was seriously ill from the effort of getting back, and was unable to collect us.

In seas not too different from those of the day before, we took the one hour ride back, holding on for dear life as the boat was thrown into the air crashing down into waves that occasionally poured over the side.  Soaked but relieved, Nii and I arrived back on land just in time to grab our bags and head to the pier where we boarded the ferry for Krabi, then by local bus to the station, where we caught our Bus back to Bangkok.  

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